Remember, THEY run the ballistic testing lab.
Are you familiar with the events of the *Kansas City Massacre* of June 17, 1933, during which escaped Leavenworth federal prisoner Frank *Jelly* Nash was being returned to federal custody by agents of the FBI forerunner *Bureau of Investigation*, the Kansas City P.D. and McAlester, Oklahoma police chief, Otto Reed. Arriving by train in Kansas City, they planned to make the rest of the trip via automobile in two cars, with the prisoner in a car owned by one of the feds. While getting in the car they came under attack by shooters with Thompson submachineguns [apparantly *rented* to the criminals by corrupt supervisors on the KCPD] attempting to free or silence Nash. The fed in the seat behind Nash was using a Winchester M97 pump shotgun borrowed from Chief Reed, as federal agents at that time had no authority to carry weapons of their own, as well as the Chevrolet sedan owned and driven by another of the agents, R.J. Caffrey. The Winchester M97 shotgun will fire every time the pump handle is operated if the trigger is held back; there's no cycle interrupter in the mechanism, though a disconnector prevents the hammer from falling until the action is fully closed, at which time the hammer drops- six shots so fired make for a potential response quite the equal of fire from a submachinegun.
Lackey, the fed with the shotgun, either out of panic or from being wounded when the ambushers opened up on the car from 15 feet away or so- he was hit in three places- [or very likely a little of both injury and panic] clamped his hand down on the weapon INCLUDING THE TRIGGER and continued cycling the foreend until the weapon was empty, and probably afterward as well. In doing so, his first shot, which may have been fired when he reflexively pulled the shotgun's trigger as he was first hit, killed handcuffed prisoner Nash, sitting in the front seat; Agent Smith, who was sitting beside Lackey in the back seat was uninjured but subsequent shotgun fire killed Chief Reed and Agent Caffrey, in front and blew out the vehicle's windhield. Special Agent R.E. Vetterli of the Kansas City office was wounded in one arm, but was outside the car and dropped down, and was therefore not hit by the shotgun fire coming from inside the vehicle- the machinegunners, firing from a car parked just a few feet from Caffrey's sedan, didn't bother further with him. Two Kansas City police detectives, Kansas City police officers W.J. Grooms and Frank Hermanson were also killed by gunfire during the shooting; the weapons used were the ones normally carried in their department's vehicle assigned to the detective bureau but were absent on that particular day....and in the hands of the shooters on the other side. Multiple gunmen, firing from 15 feet and it lasted for about 30 seconds...and then was very quiet.
Unfortunately for the Bureau of Investigations the Kansas City Coroner's investigation showed that those inside the car had died from shotgun fire, not the .45-caliber submachinegun bullets. Accordingly, Hoover directed the establishment of a federal crime investigations laboratory that could take control of evidence from local investigators and deliver results more to the federal agency's way of thinking. And when legal authority for the feds to carry weapons was granted, they were extensively trained on a variety of weapons- but there was one shotgun they were under orders NOT to use: that Winchester Model 97 with its convenient external hammer and that interesting feature that gave it more firepower than others of its type.
The following FBI investigation and rearrangement of evidence probably resulted in the framing of Charles Arthur *Prettyboy* Floyd for a part in the K.C. train station shootings that he likely had no part of. But he was shot and killed by the FBI before he could ever stand trial, so there was no need for the FBI to lie their way out of that little problem again.
The FBI has been corrupt from its very beginnings, and it's no better now.
-archy-/-
